Misanthropy and Intellectuals: The Left is a Mopey, Motley Mess

Larry Koler recently wrote an excellent post asking whether or not we are having an intellectual debate with the Left. Of course, they don’t want one.

I keep thinking that the problem with politics in America is that those who listen to NPR nod their heads to the received knowledge of the cognitive elite. Meanwhile, on the street level, I have found that arguing …

Exactly. Wish I could state the case as eloquently. Your post raises what in my mind is an obvious question, and one which will have the amber bead wearers frothing at the mouth. To save the Republic, do we need some kind of qualification to vote besides being born here? Like demonstrate that you have some idea of the content of the Bill of Rights? Like have some proof that you produce and pay taxes? Toqueville pointed out that when the wards of the state figured out they could vote themselves more and more benefits without expending any effort then it would be game, set and match for the Republic. We are there.

Stan, maybe I’m a foolish, Dondi-eyed naif, but I still think Democracy is a good compromise of how to have a government. Of course expansive government becomes self-justifying and self-aggrandizing, but the remedy lies in a populace that will vote in its self interest. If it’s made clear that the same self-interest lies in not expecting government services for everything.

I cannot possibly make a better argument than walking into an airport and pointing at the TSA and say “that! Is that working for you?”

Great, great post. First, I wholeheartedly agree about arguing with low information voters and liberals; obviously, our tactics just don’w work with abstracts, math, charts, and historical references. However, the “who’s taking care of you” line is good, I would think, for some demographics; but, unfortunately, so many people are taken care of by the government (i.e. always had a check in the mail the 1st of the month). In the heart of Appalachia, social workers go in homes to help moms make to-do lists, like 1. Go to the store, 2. Buy laundry detergent, etc. It’s pathetic.

Meanwhile, I follow many college educated “mom” bloggers via social media. What are the ladies discussing today? Angelina’s article and the 1% elites who cut lines at Disney.

Great Article! However your response is still a little too intellectual. I use the Post Office example all of the time but they just ignore it these days.

You could add a little emotion like, ‘ Besides studies show Gun Control only hurts the poor and the environment. I think Democrats are pretty mean-spirited about this issue.’

Loved the post. Still, you’re talking to lefties about politics? Why? Do you talk to an insurance salesman about insurance when you’re not in the market for insurance? No you do not. Nor should you.

The federal government is no longer cosa nostra – our thing. It’s their thing, that is, a thing belonging entirely to the wealthy denizens of six of the ten richest counties in the United States, which happen to be located around Washington, D.C. Well, aforesaid wealthy denizens and their useful idiots on the left together with hordes of sympathetic low-information voters.

I know people like the bony-fingered lady – in my own family. One long car ride, my father’s second wife self-identified as a libertarian, whereupon she proceeded to hold forth on how “government is us”, entitlements are “investments in us”, and Dubya was Satan incarnate out-eviled only by Darth Cheney. Sadly, I could believe my ears because even if these weren’t her words brewed in the feverish region between her own ears, they were authentic to her. And there was nothing to gain in riposte; the coup de grace had been administered when she spoke.

Sadly, I think collapse of the system is the only thing that will wake the Obamaphone people up. The boney fingered lefties will try to rebuild from the ashes a more grand edifice of bureaucratic incompetence, but the tax base on which such a monument must stand will have been obliterated. My fear is that we will be in the zombie apocalypse, but the zombies will be the Obamaphoners wandering the wilds in search of signal bars rather than brains.

I never do tire of finding out all the strange things people believe. The thing about “low information” voters is that people who the most powerless, (such as by being poor or having chaos in their personal lives), are the quickest to believe in esoteric conspiracies.

Having been poor and having been a fly on the wall with rich people both, the thing that reverberates is no one really has belief that government is going to work all that well.

Obama has his cult of personality but people on the Left are not developing a stronger sense of confidence in the competence of government. In fact, so much of their world view is tied up in misanthropy, that I think that many on the left derive pleasure being out of power and assuming the Powers-That-Be align against them.

You are very correct, Sweet-and-Low. To young people coming up “the man” is the current Liberal elite. The kids who have spent the past few years rolling their eyes at lectures about “bullying” will rebel as they always do.

There is something enigmatic about being out of power. We are the ones now that get to wear black turtlenecks and meet on golf courses after dark to converse around a brass Reagan bust.

Daniel Jeyn:In fact, so much of their world view is tied up in misanthropy, that I think that many on the left derive pleasure being out of power and assuming the Powers-That-Be align against them.

Does that make them any different from the right?

Well, yes it does. There are lots of misanthropes on the right. But if they’re not starting out with the premise that Big Government is the solution, then they are not as ultimately doomed to despair as the Lefties who are waiting for the right philosopher king to come along and save them.

I disagree that profiling could work for a large-scale travel system like the U.S.’s (for logistical, not “civil rights” reasons), but that’s a topic for another day. · 11 minutes ago

No time like the present. 29 of the FBI’s 30 Most Wanted are Islamic. Half of the 9/11 bombers first name was Mohamed. The Boston Marathon Bombers. The Underwear Bomber. The Fort Hood Shooter. The Times Square Bomber. 90% of the terrorist acts are committed by one fifth of one percent of the population. And yet the Obama administration insists on making 69 year old white women to do strip searches upon whim.